ACORN gives ammo to its enemies

Tuesday

Sep 29, 2009 at 12:01 AMSep 29, 2009 at 10:39 AM

Never underestimate the power of a 20-year-old woman in hot pants.

Just hook her up with an applecheeked young man dressed as a sort of preppie pimp, add a video camera and send them off for a chat with some dimwitted neighborhood financial counselors for ACORN. Stir in enough chutzpah to make Borat look like a shrinking violet, and you've got one heckuva scandal.

Young conservative activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles hardened up their fresh-faced looks just enough to pose as a pimp and prostitute seeking advice from ACORN on setting up a brothel. Their hiddencamera videos have provided a bonanza of what President Barack Obama characterizes as "catnip" for commentators and late-night comedians.

They've also spurred Washington's usually sluggish funding gears to spin into warp drive. The Democratic Congress and Washington's bureaucracy have cut off funds to ACORN for such work that includes tax advice, housing counseling and census taking.

Suddenly an organization that used to beg for media attention to the issues for which it campaigned is receiving an abundance of the sort of attention that nobody wants.

Most of the right's recent obsession with ACORN, which was founded in 1970 in Arkansas as an organization for poor people, does not grow out of concern for poor people. It grows largely out of a hope that bringing down ACORN, the nation's largest community organization, will help them to bring down Obama. Back in 1995, young Harvard Law grad Barack Obama helped ACORN and a team of Chicago attorneys - along with the U.S. Department of Justice - win a lawsuit forcing Illinois to implement the federal "motorvoter" bill. The organization and the former community organizer have not had much contact since.

Yet mere mention of ACORN can transform Fox News' Glenn Beck into Howard Beale, the deranged commentator in Network who leads the nation in shouting, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore."

"Right now, get off the couch," Beck demanded in a recent broadcast. "While I'm talking, you pick up the phone. You call the newspaper." If ACORN isn't a top priority with your newspaper, he said, "then what the hell are they good for?"

Yet, conservatives underestimate their successes in framing this debate long before Giles put on her hot pants. Most ACORN coverage in major media has been overwhelmingly negative, according to a study by Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College, and Christopher R. Martin, a professor of journalism at University of Northern Iowa. Of the 647 newspaper and broadcast news stories about ACORN that they found in 2007 and 2008, most were on allegations of massive voter registration fraud.

Some of the names on registrations included "Mickey Mouse" and other questionable celebrities. Yet more than 80 percent of those stories failed to mention that there is no record, for example, of Mr. Mouse actually casting a vote, and almost all of the other allegations proved to be unfounded, too.

In fact, failure to find cases of voter fraud to prosecute led to the firing of some U.S. attorneys under pressure from President George W. Bush's political czar Karl Rove. That does not excuse the stupid, immoral and possibly criminal assistance that ACORN staffers were caught on video offering to the young duo. But it does offer a valuable lesson: When people are out to get you, try not to hand them more ammunition.

It is somewhat reassuring that the video pranksters reportedly were turned away at some offices. It is also comforting to know that ACORN fired the offending employees and has since hired Scott Harshbarger, a former Massachusetts attorney general, to conduct what he calls a "robust, no-holds-barred" and transparent review.

ACORN brought most of its troubles on itself. The group's enormous growth since its humble start has brought scandal, financial calamity and internal rifts over charges of bad management. It was an inviting target for political adversaries. Now its big embarrassment sends the worst possible picture to the world of low-income Americans, the very people whom ACORN was trying to help.